4 Months Old

My babies turned four months old on Sunday. I'm noticing more changes these days. They're reaching more and more developmental milestones.


As of four months:

• we're usually eating about 5oz six times a day. And normally the last feeding is increased to 6oz in hopes of sleeping longer through the night.
• Our diapers are changed 6 times/day and we only poop once a day now.
  
• We wear size 2 diapers.
  
• we have our last feeding between 7-8pm and then wake up hungry around 2-3am. We are fed and put back down to sleep until our next feeding around 6am. Then we start our day.
• We still share a crib that is in the master bedroom. In another month or so we'll be in our own separate cribs and in the nursery at night.
• We have a nighttime routine that includes swaddling, white noise and sleeping in our crib. We are only in our cribs at night. We tried to stop swaddling and we weren't ready to give that up yet.
  
• We are still restless at night and Daddy is the one that usually gets up to give us our pacifier or to check on us. Mommy is lucky to have Daddy.
• We like sucking on our pacifiers. Andrew especially. Mommy worries that we'll still be sucking on them when we're three years old.
  
• We have almost outgrown our infant bathtub. We splash water all over the place during bath time.
• We now recognize Mommy's face and voice and we mimic her expressions.
• We have a daily routine that is a constant cycle of feeding, burping, diaper change, activity time and then nap...then we start over again
  
• We can play and entertain ourselves in our exercisers for up to an hour. We love to bounce up and down. Matthew lasts much longer than Andrew before becoming bored or fussy. We also love to look at ourselves in the mirror. And just recently we realized that we can touch the rattle and have it make a noise. (Matthew has been playing in his exerciser for 90 mins and just now fell asleep in there)
  
• We smile all of the time and actually laugh out loud.
• We also "talk" constantly.
• We do not roll over from a laying down position and haven't attempted it either. We can occasionally when we are propped up in the boppy pillows on our stomachs.
  
• We dislike tummy-time greatly. Mommy has to distract/entertain us constantly in order for us to be on our tummy even 5 mins. We don't get much tummy time.
  
• We still have yet to try anything other than milk (breast milk or formula). Mommy is still debating on when to try out the rice cereal &/or solid foods. Mommy has many food allergies and she fears that early introduction of foods could increase our chances of having them too.
• Daddy packs one of us around in the baby Bjorn carrier when he gets home from work. Mommy doesn't use it much b/c it hurts her back.
  
• We will be getting our first immunizations tomorrow. Mommy and Daddy decided to put them off a little and we'll be spacing them out. So we'll only get the HIB and IPV (polio) vaccines tomorrow. We'll alternate that series of shots w/ the DTaP series (starting next month). All of the other immunizations will be put off until we're a little older.
• Daddy set up our 529 college savings plans this past month. So we're already being prepped for college :-)

***I will update later this week on how the immunizations go. J will be going with me. He's taking the day off because I'll be having a CAT scan later on in the day. I had some x-rays of my head come back abnormal last month so they want me to have a CAT scan. I hoping this might lead to some answers on why I have such horrible headaches. I have daily (5 out of 7 days/week on average) headaches that cause moderate but manageable pain and then severe migraines on top of that. My primary physician was concerned when I mentioned it a few years ago. I've lived with this a very long time...since high school. My doctor said it wasn't normal and not okay to ignore so I agreed to look into some testing after my pregnancy. I wasn't willing to worry about it during my infertility treatments so now that we're past all of that maybe we can find a cause and a cure to my headache issues. I am crossing my fingers that they do indeed find something as long as it's easily treatable/curable. I'm not holding any high expectations though since headaches run in my family and no one else has found a magic cure.

Rice cereal coming soon

My twins will be 4 months old in a few days. I'd like to try rice cereal sometime in the next few weeks. We've done nothing but milk up to now. So...I'd like to know all about your experiences w/ introductions to foods and how it went. What worked for you and what didn't? How did you start? At this point I'm thinking I'll start w/ a tiny amount of rice cereal... isn't it one teaspoon of rice cereal to 4 teaspoons of formula to start with? Is there any reason to start w/ putting it in the bottle vs. spoon feeding them? Do you just do this once a day to start and then increase to several times a day? I really have no idea. I guess you can just judge based on how they respond.
I'll see how rice cereal goes and once they have that down... I'll move on to vegetables and then fruits. Supposedly you want to start w/ vegetables b/c babies already favor sweet tastes and it will be harder to get them to eat vegetables if they eat fruits first. I hear you should only do one type of food for 3-5 days before moving onto another to make sure there are no allergies. I also read that it's best to introduce the new food in the morning or at lunch so that you can look for an allergic reaction all day before they go to sleep at night.

I don't know how I'll feed them..meaning where. I guess I could put them in their highchairs but they aren't sitting up on their own yet so that may not work. I have bouncy seats that might work. Should I spend the money and buy bumbo seats? This is when I'll be extra grateful for having dogs...to eat all of the dropped food.

So...did you experience an increase in how long your baby slept at night after introducing foods? I was told by my doctor that babies do not sleep longer w/ the introduction of rice cereal but I know several Moms that would swear that there children did.

Focusing on the bright side.

Have I mentioned how cute my boys are? They are so adorable, cuddly and funny. I can't get enough of them. I just hold them, squeeze them and kiss their squishy cheeks non-stop. I dread the day that they turn and run when they see that their Mom is about to love on them. That will be a sad day indeed. So I've got to get it all in while I can.

From the sound of this post can you tell that I lived through my migraine and having J out of town? I survived...even though I was sure at the time that I would never make it through to see another day. The boys got fed, had clean diapers and I tried very hard to give them play time even w/ the jack hammer pounding away in my head. J came home a day early since I basically threatened the future existence of his boy parts... and the moment I saw him I forgot everything except how happy I was that he was home.

I forgot all about how pissed I was that he got to be at the beach in storm conditions for vacation work in an awesome hotel w/ no nighttime feedings (working around the clock) while his wife slaved away in poor health and barely managed to shower. I forgave him the minute I saw him...and was so so so happy. Aren’t I the nicest wife alive?

I just rock. And to add to the nicest wife part...I saved us mucho money by staying on our medical insurances ass.... We were getting outrageous bills from the twins NICU hospital stay. Even though we were at an in-network hospital...they charged us for out-of-network providers that treated the boys while they were there. Not okay to charge someone out of network fees while they were preformed for emergency services in a pre-approved stay in-network hospital. After many idiot customer service calls, tales of how it was our responsibility, our cost, then unfulfilled promises to fix it, loooooong waits on hold, etc. etc... I finally got it all cleared up. Yes- I deserve large shiny expensive somethings for my effort :-)

Since I'm on the topic of how wonderful I am... I need this topic today. I have to post a little something that will annoy many of you. So don't hate me b/c I feel that I deserve this after the many crappy things I've gone through. So here goes (my blog readers are going to disappear over-night) I was pregnant w/ twins and somehow managed to not get one stretch mark and currently my size 2 pants are a little big. I have no idea how I managed to do this b/c I didn't watch what I ate when I was pregnant. In fact I ate fast food for the first time in forever. And I lost it all w/ out trying. I was back to my original weight at my 3 week post baby appt and now I weigh less than I did pre-pregnancy. Pretty much due to the fact that I have no time to eat..let alone cook. Now to be completely honest...my body is not what it used to be. My boobs are definitely less firm that before and my waist is not as defined. But, I had so much fear from reading about others experiences w/ twin pregnancy that I was sure I'd be carrying around 50 extra pounds right now and have huge angry red stretch marks from my neck to my knees and it just didn't happen.

If this makes you feel bad...don't... b/c I need some positives right now....let me leave you on this sucky note. We live in California and got into the housing market in late 2004 (housing peak) for a criminal amount of money for what we actually got.... and it's now 2008 (housing slump/crisis). Talk about a poor investment. It's just painful.




Matthew and Andrew (best investment ever)



Don't quite have the sitting up thing down yet. We're working on it.

Seeking something...anything

I'm having a nervous breakdown. I'm actually crying right now...got less than 3 interrupted hours of sleep last night, have a bad bad bad migraine and my husband has been and will continue to be out of town working for the rest of the week. I am completely and totally alone. I have one of those migraines where you get the aura (spots of light), nausea and a blinding headache. I've taken several Imitrix and it isn't helping. I'm stressed, totally sleep deprived and I think the babies can sense it b/c they are so fussy. Matthew cried all night long. I was up pacing with him non-stop all night...must have walked many miles. I had to throw him on his bouncer (screaming) so I could run to the toilet to vomit and then run back to pick him up to continue pacing.

I realize I have no support system here at all. We have no family here. My parents are almost four hours away. We moved here three years ago and I haven't made that many friends. My closest local friend moved away several months ago...another one is sick right now and anyone else I know works and has their own family to take care of. There is no one I can call to help out for a few hours.

*My sick friend just came by wearing a face mask so she wouldn't get us sick. She's going to pick up and go fill Matthews prescription for Zantac since he's basically out. Bless her. One thing I won't have to worry about.

All I know is...J's check better be huge! He's making all double time pay and is working extremely long shifts w/ short rest periods in between. He was called up to Northern California b/c of the recent storms. He's an electric engineer for a utility company and I guess there are tons of people without power so J's pretty busy trying to help out. They told him it would be 3 days so I'm a little annoyed to put it mildly that its going way past that.

Matthews calling...better go.